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The summer when I was fourteen, I got a job at a local veterinary clinic. I was technically too young to work legally in my state, but to me, spending a day taking care of animals was not work, it was awesometime, and I begged and begged until my parents signed some paper saying they gave me permission and I wouldn’t work over a certain amount of hours a week child labor blah blah blah boring. My title? Kennel Girl. I was ecstatic. What a glamorous title. I wanted a t-shirt that said that. A Hypercolor one. Obvs.

I grew up in a tiny town covered in cow farms. The office was set on acres and acres of land that was covered in stables and dotted with horses, goats, and sheep. The office itself consisted of a tiny waiting area, two exam rooms, an operating area/back room, and a kennel (for sick dogs and cats and also for boarders). Upstairs was a rundown two bedroom apartment. Originally, the vet, whom we will call Dr. Costly, lived in the upstairs apartment, but over the years he had gotten married, had a daughter, and built a large home a few hundred feet away on the same property. His dogs, two ancient Rottweilers named Bullet and Rosie and an absolutely insane evil genius Irish Setter named Allie had essentially taken over the upstairs apartment.

My job was to be the first one there in the morning. I’d go straight upstairs and let Bullet, Rosie, and Asshole, I mean Allie, out to run in the fields (well, Allie ran, Bullet and Rosie basically stared at her like she was an idiot while they gracefully wandered around, terrifying sheep.) I also fed his horses and warily eyed Sara, the potbellied pig, when I was outside, but details on Sara will come at another time. Once back inside, I’d feed the three dogs in the reception area and then clean out the cage of (and feed) Baby Bird, a tiny little blue budgie that had been abandoned at the office and adopted by Dr. Costly. Baby Bird’s cage hung above a gleaming metal table in the back room that we used to groom and examine dogs. Then I’d clean the office, walk every dog in the kennel, clean the cages and feed all of the cats and dogs. All before the vet arrived to open for the day. I loved it. Every second of it. Until.

Budgies!

One morning, like many others, I was happily going through my routine, dancing around the office, cleaning up crusty food and animal pee as happily as Cinderella getting dressed with the help of her woodland friends. I heard some weird clickety-clakety noises coming from the back room when I was up front vacuuming, but between the dogs barking and the cats caterwauling and the vacuum vacuuming, the clickety-clackety noises didn’t really resonate. As I was finishing up, Dr. Costly came in and wished me a good morning. I wished him one back and continued doing what I was doing. Until I heard him call out to me these fateful words: “Um, where is Baby Bird?” Where’s Baby Bird? Where did he think Baby Bird was? It’s not like she got around much, I mean, we let her flutter here or there sometimes, but odds are if you were looking for Baby Bird, you’d find her in Baby Bird’s cage. “She’s in her cage! I just fed her,” I replied confidently, thinking Dr. Costly must be a blind moron. “No, she isn’t,” he said. “Can you come in here, please?” Oy. This is not good, I thought. Where is that damn bird?

Hesitantly, I walked to the back room, and sure enough, Baby Bird’s cage door was wide open, all dramatic-like, taunting me and rubbing in the fact that it was indeed sans bird. Shit. “I really don’t know, sir, she was just there!” I said, in Shaky Voice. “Okay, sometimes she unhooks the latch, let’s look for her, I’m sure she’s somewhere.” Dr. Costly reassured me. He went into the kennel to check out the animals, and I stayed there, looking around the room, checking for the tiny bird in things like closed drawers and my lunch bag like a complete dumbass. And then tripped over Allie, who was being so uncharacteristically quiet that I hadn’t noticed her.

My last words of innocence were “Allie, what you got there? Huh, Allie-girl? What are you playing with?” She then turned her beautiful brick-red, silky face toward me and belched, and I swear to you on nachos, just like in a cartoon, she burped out little blue feathers. She burped Baby Bird into my face. And that’s when my eyes zoomed in on her nails, and then I turned and saw the metal table, and all at once I knew that the clickety-clackety noise I had ignored had been Allie, climbing on the table, Jurassic Park Velociraptor-style, to bird-murder Baby Bird. And that, I can safely say, is why Allie the Irish Setter is an Asshole.